Fleet Supplement - 2017 Fleet Management Guide

GPS Insight is excited to be the sponsor of the 2017 Fleet Management Guide produced by Lawn & Landscape Magazine. The purpose of this report is to enlighten landscape contractors about where the GPS fleet tracking industry is today and how it is impacting businesses throughout North America.

The findings of the report indicate that the landscaping industry’s adoption of GPS tracking technology to manage fleets of vehicles, trailers and other mobile assets mirrors the adoption rate of the overall fleet industry. This shows that landscaping businesses are also understanding the value of the technology and realizing that it is no longer a nice-to-have tool, but a necessity to manage daily operations, reduce costs, reduce risk and increase revenue. It is expected that within a few years, the majority of fleets will use GPS tracking as a core piece of their fleet management puzzle.

Although landscape businesses are continuing to grow, there are still many challenges they face. The top three challenges related to vehicles and technology are labor costs, fuel costs and consumption and vehicle maintenance. Any one of these can take a big chunk out of a business’s bottom line. It is recommended that contractors fully evaluate these expenses and risks and look for solutions to stop the bleeding.

The results of the report also identify the top ways GPS tracking helps improve fleet management. It is great to see that about 90 percent of respondents using GPS tracking today find that it helps most with increasing accountability, which addresses, directly or indirectly, all three of the top challenges faced by the landscaping industry.

Landscaping businesses rely on the performance of their trucks and crews to drive revenue and stay competitive. This is why so many business owners and managers are looking for a tool that will answer the unknowns about their workforce and provide insight on where to make improvements. GPS tracking helps solve the most problematic fleet challenges so that landscaping businesses can get back to what they do best, serving customers.

(GPS technology) is no longer a nice-to-have tool, but a necessity to manage daily operations, reduce costs, reduce risk and increase revenue.

We hope you find the information in this report helpful in understanding the fleet management landscape and how using GPS tracking technology will reduce costs, reduce risk and increase revenue.

Ryan Driscoll, Marketing Director, GPS Insight

Should robots do your mowing?

Features - Robomowing

Love it or hate it, lawn maintenance is a significant segment of the market. But it’s never easy money: Margins are tight, competition is stiff and employees are hard to keep. “When I owned a sod installation company, I never wanted to do maintenance,” says Nick Sagnella, co-founder of HomeVP in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It’s typically resource-intensive, and you don’t make money unless you’re operating on a large scale.”

After Sagnella sold his company, he and a business partner began to look at other service industry options. “We wanted to harness technology to service homeowners better,” Sagnella says. “We narrowed it to the landscaping sector, and automated mowing seemed to be ripe.” Their company began installing robotic mowers for residential properties in the Charlotte area in June 2017 with several dozen in service to date.

With just a handful of robotic mowing companies currently in operation across the country, the industry is poised for growth. Interestingly, these mowers have been popular in Europe for decades. But growing interest in the environment, and the techno-geeky coolness factor of a little robot driving across the lawn are spurring interest in the U.S. now, says Sagnella.

Reason for robotics.

Robotic mowers can perform when humans can’t. “Many of our customers were not happy with their current providers,” Sagnella says. “It doesn’t matter how great your operation is. You can’t put a 1,300-pound mower on the grass in the rain.” Robotics can mow multiple times a week even when the weather isn’t cooperating.

Justin Crandall and his business partner ran a Dallas lawn maintenance company. “We had 5,000 customers and did maintenance only,” Crandall says. “We were 100 percent residential and went after the part of the market no other landscaper likes.” But with the volume and the rainiest two summers on record after a 10-year drought in Texas, they soon became disillusioned. “Reliability, costs and weather became big issues,” he says.

They researched Europe’s robotics market and launched Robin, their robotic mowing program, in May 2017, selling off their traditional lawn business. Less than 10 percent of their customers opted to transition with the company. “We decided to find a new customer base, which has turned out to be primarily the tech-savvy and environmental people,” Crandall says.

Andrew Walsh, owner of the design/build firm Terra Dura Landscapes in Austin, Texas, jumped into the market because he was listening to an interview that got him thinking about job loss due to automation.

“To me, it makes sense to automate anywhere there’s a simple task,” Walsh says. In late spring 2017, he opened a sister company, Blackland Supply Company, to become a robotic mower dealer.

How robotics work.

Robotic mowers are slightly smaller than traditional push mowers. They weigh between 20 to 50 pounds and run using a low-voltage wire, laid out along the perimeter of the lawn, similar to what’s installed for electronic dog fencing. The charging station is placed within 50 feet of an outdoor electrical outlet.

Wires can be run through expansion joints of concrete drives or walkways. Asphalt may require using an angle grinder to cut a channel, then caulking over the wire. If there’s a fence, two robots may be required. The robots are scheduled to run depending on the customer’s grass type and preference. The machine returns to the charging station when power is low. They are also quiet so they can run at night without disturbing clients, Walsh says.

Robotic mowers may be a better solution to mowing in wet conditions.

Photo by Kate Spirgen

Units also are scheduled around irrigation times because there’s a risk they’d bump into operating sprinkler heads and damage them. Mowers can run in rain, but it’s not ideal in certain types of soil. Some have rain sensors so they’ll head back to their charging station if it’s too wet.

Robotic road bumps.

Although there’s obviously a nifty-gee-whiz factor to robotic mowing, it’s not without challenges. “There’s a lot more involved than meets the eye,” Sagnella says. One of the issues is cut wires. “We didn’t anticipate the number that get damaged during edging, trimming or aeration,” Crandall says. And although every major manufacturer assured him it wasn’t going to be a problem, Crandall says theft is a concern. “In the early days, we had three units stolen,” he says. “Now we custom install GPS trackers.”

Awareness about robotic mowers is another issue, as it only appeals to a small share of the market. The companies say leads have come from social media, Google ads or local news coverage.

So, is this new world worth exploring? In the big picture, time will tell how quick Americans are to embrace the technology. But it could be good for everyone.

“Hopefully, one of the effects is that it’s going to save time and money so we can offer better employment,” Walsh says. “I think it’s going to be a solution to the constant labor problems.

My crews joke about it, but they know I’m trying to save their jobs. I want to offer real employment with room to grow.”

In hot demand

Features - Firepits

More clients are asking for their firepits to match their homes, requesting designs that are congruent with existing architecture.

Photo courtesy of Four Seasons Landscaping

As firepits and outdoor fireplaces maintain their popularity, customizations to these outdoor entertaining spaces are where contractors are looking to make their mark.

A decade ago, Rob DelGandio would build half a dozen firepits per year. Now, he builds 15 to 20 per year.

“I would say they’re far more popular now than they were even say 10 years ago,” says DelGandio, owner and vice president of Four Seasons Landscaping, based in Damascus, Maryland.

A custom-built firepit costs $5,000 10 years ago; it costs about $2,500 today, he says. “Now it’s no longer the upper-end class that have access to it.”

Outdoor living.

Four Seasons Landscaping has been offering firepit and outdoor fireplace installation for close to 15 years.

“Entertaining has moved from indoors to outdoors,” DelGandio says. “And homeowners like to have their neighbors over, they have kids, they like spaces that are suitable for families so there’s things for kids to do and things for adults to do. A firepit is something that’s communal to all of those things.”

Enhance Designscapes, based in Teton Valley, Idaho, and Jackson, Wyoming, has been offering firepit installations since 2010. The company employs six people and has an annual revenue of about $500,000. They typically install two to three outdoor fire features per year. They primarily serve high-end residential clients and offer landscape design-build services.

Dan Sanders, co-owner, has personally been installing this type of hardscaping since 2004. He says the popularity of outdoor fire features is hotter than ever.

“The whole outdoor living space phenomenon’s what it’s all about, and creating nice little destinations around your property is something that’s really appealing to our clients,” he says. “But more specifically, there’s some cool new technologies out there.”

New technologies.

One of those new technologies is a more natural fire ring.

Photo courtesy of Four Seasons Landscaping

“Traditional firepits that are gas-fired have rings that kind of just put up a uniform fire effect,” Sanders says. “They’ve actually created an infrastructure for gas firepits, or propane or natural gas, where they have little emitters that essentially set up flames a lot more natural as opposed to just coming off of that ring.”

These flames create different elevations, as well as a natural-appearing flicker. For clients who do not have a natural gas connection, Sanders offers a remote setup with a small propane tank.

“You can hide (the tank) somewhere in an enclosure and put it far away, so it kind of lends a little more flexibility,” he says.

“You’ve got to be a little bit careful about it because you’ve got wiring that runs through a structure that’s going to create a lot of heat, but with fireplaces, we’re definitely putting more lighting into the mantels, into the hearth, the part at the bottom. Illumination is key,” he says.

Minor details.

Sanders says clients are also asking for their firepits to match their homes.

“We’re trying to build these and design them so that they’re congruent with the existing architecture, as far as materials,” Sanders says.

Those small details can also make a fire structure stand out. “We’re doing more intricate inlays now. We’re taking the same structures that we’ve been building for the last 10 or 15 years, and we’re just making them more custom,” DelGandio says.

Custom radius caps around firepits can also offer detail. “It’s two or three large slab pieces that go around the parameter of that cap that allow you to put drinks and stuff on,” he says. “Those types of things that would signify it was different. Same with the fireplaces, inlays in the face and the neck of the fireplace, different types of arches in the opening, all things that make it slightly different than the neighbor.”

Popular materials.

The trend toward “green living” is not ending soon, DelGandio says. To capitalize on this trend, he offers natural materials when building firepits.

“We can build anything out of natural stone whereas block and segmental block, those types of materials, we’re very limited as to what we can do,” DelGandio says. “We have way more flexibility to be more custom with stone, and really the cost is not that much greater. It’s maybe 10 percent more, but what you get in the value for that makes it seem worth it.”

Four Seasons Landscaping employs about 25 people and has an annual revenue between $2.5 million and $3 million. The bulk of clients are residential.

Recent installations have featured natural materials such as wood mantels on the outdoor fireplace using material such as Brazilian hardwood instead of a stone slab.

“More people want stuff that’s natural because there’s no production process with it. It’s just the materials pulled out of the earth, and a crew of stone masons can build something if they’ve got the right skill set,” DelGandio says.

Function for food.

While firepits are often enjoyed for their aesthetic appeal, clients still want to be able to use them like they would a real campfire, Sanders says.

When designing these firepits, he will make sure it’s scaled to size and safe so children can easily place a stick over a flame to roast food. Then, in snowy climates, where firepits are not being used year-round, custom enclosures or caps can be offered as an upsell to also protect the structure during the off-season, he adds.

The author is a freelancer based in Ohio.

Tanked!

Features - Fuel Management

Onsite fuel reduces costly windshield time and minimizes the risk of theft – if you plan properly.

A truck with a crew pulls into a gas station. Three guys get out. One crew member gasses up the vehicle and fills some small fuel tanks for equipment. Another guy goes into the gas station store to buy a cup of coffee. The third waits in the truck.

How many man-hours were spent at the gas station? Now, multiply that per crew per workday – per month, per season. Yikes.

Some crews at Level Green Landscaping in Marlboro, Maryland, include six team members. If two of them are fueling the vehicle and equipment, there are four others on the clock. “Figure that times 50 crews, that’s a lot of money on lost labor,” says Craig Fugate, shop manager. Fifteen minutes of time at a gas station times four employees and 50 trucks – you’re up to 500 hours on a daily basis.

The good news: onsite fueling can cut that dead windshield time where employees are clocked in but unproductive. There are other benefits like reducing fuel theft, fuel discounts and better oversight of crews’ time.

That’s why Level Green has three fuel tanks at each of its three locations. What prompted the decision at one of the locations was not just labor savings, but $2,000 in fuel charges from a former employee who took advantage of a company gas card. “Now, we have more control over our fuel expenses,” Fugate says.

Pumped about the Pros.

Owning property was key for Level Green when the company was adding onsite fuel to its locations. “We started at our first location, where we put in a 500-gallon 89 octane tank for fueling equipment,” Fugate says. At the time, Level Green was renting that space and there was no place for additional tanks. Once the business moved locations, it added tanks for fueling.

The tanks are double-walled to prevent leaks, and the fuel supplier provides them, Fugate says. Insurance is required on the tanks at one location. “Every state or county or landlord has different regulations,” he says.

Bob Grover, president of Pacific Landscape Management in Hillsboro, Oregon, has three locations and onsite gasoline for fueling equipment only. “We buy mobile fueling trailers that are DOT-approved, but they don’t ever move,” he says of complying with state regulations. “Because they are mobile fuel stations, we don’t have to go through the same compliance issues as having an onsite tank.”

After navigating the restrictions and figuring out what you can do, there can be real cost savings per gallon associated with onsite fueling. Fugate says Level Green sometimes pays up to $0.10 less per gallon. When the company gave all of its fuel business to one supplier, it realized a greater cost benefit.

Plus, Level Green has an auto-fill agreement with its fuel supplier. “So, we never run out of fuel,” Fugate says. “And when it snows if the power is out, you can’t go to a gas station to get fuel. Here, we fire up a generator and we can still get fuel from our pumps.”

The sheer size of the company at $18 million justifies the need for onsite fueling. That number of crew members, vehicles and equipment is too costly to fuel up even at cardlock stations, Fugate says.

Though Grover has found that onsite fuel for equipment saves time at the gas station, using convenient cardlock stations for vehicles is most cost-effective due to the expense with having large onsite tanks. “We do monitor cardlock use,” he says, noting that vehicle mileage is tracked and compared with fuel purchases at cardlock stations. “If the miles per gallon goes way down, maybe not all the fuel is going into our vehicles. The other thing we watch is the (way) time cards are used. If it tells me a vehicle was fueled up at 9 p.m., it’s very possible that gas didn’t go into our truck off-hours.”

Systems are also in place for Pacific Landscape’s onsite mobile fuel tank. “There has to be some methodology on nights and weekends – we lock ours up after the workday so no one can access it,” Grover says.

Preparing for onsite fuel.

To gain the benefits of onsite fueling, there need to be some systems in place, points out Ben Collinsworth, CEO of Native Land Design in Cedar Park, Texas. Native Land Design does not yet have onsite fueling, but that’s only because the business will move in the short-term.

But Collinsworth has done his homework on what’s necessary to maximize the benefits of onsite fueling. For one, there’s property location and accessibility. “The fuel tanks have to be in an area where your guys can still come in and out and not be in the way of 18-wheelers or fuel delivery trucks,” he says. “Not all properties have that. If you are trying to get 15 crews out of a one-acre site, onsite fueling might not be for you. It has to be done safely.”

Also, the actual location of the business can impact the cost of fuel delivery, Collinsworth says. “If you are 30 miles out in the middle of nowhere and they’re going to charge you a ton to deliver the gas, maybe that doesn’t make sense financially,” he says.

And, how many tanks will you need? If you use diesel for vehicles, propane for mowers and 89-octane gasoline for handheld equipment, do you have room for three tanks onsite? Or, will you bring on type of fuel onsite and rely on gas stations or cardlock stations for other uses?

Who will police the system on site? Someone should be in charge of overseeing fueling, whether that’s a shop manager, mechanic or crew supervisors. At Level Green, Fugate oversees the fueling and crew supervisors are responsible for fueling up vehicles and equipment. No one gets a gas card now that there’s fueling on site.

Another key consideration is whether you have the GPS systems in place to monitor vehicles in the field. However, with GPS tracking and a policy of no stopping, onsite fueling can save wasted windshield time.

“The reason most businesses chose onsite fuel is because we are trying to reduce the nonproductive stop times and windshield time as much as humanly possible,” Collinsworth says. “The onsite fuel makes sense all day.”

Leveling the field

Features - Company Profile | Level Green Landscaping

Level Green Landscaping reduced turnover through a focus on recruiting and training.

When Doug Delano started Level Green Landscaping in 2002 at age 44, he and co-founder Bill Hardy planned to build the business into a “retirement vehicle” that they could sell when they turned 65.

At first, Delano thought he’d just hire a couple of guys to help him with gardening projects around Capitol Hill, where he lives. But, he says, “I realized as I got older that I wouldn’t be able to do that type of work.”

Instead, he had to build a team of employees who could consistently deliver service to his standards as the company grew. Now with more than 200 employees, Delano and Hardy are committed to providing for them long-term by growing a stable business.

Now that he’s nearing 60, Delano says, “Maybe I’m not going to retire after all, because we enjoy what we do.”

Although he’s not thinking about leaving anytime soon, Delano is focused on developing the next generation of leaders at the Maryland-based commercial landscape management firm.

“We could do things for the short-term, make the company really profitable and sell it for a decent amount of money,” he says, “but that’s not what it’s about. It’s not just about making money. You’re trying to make people’s lives better – not just the people you’re servicing, but also the people that work for you.”

Over time, they’ve developed processes to recruit, train and retain the best talent at Level Green.

Commercial core.

When Delano got married and moved to Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s, he had “absolutely no experience in the landscape industry.” A former high school math teacher with a philosophy degree, Delano had grown up on a farm, where he inherited a love of gardening from his parents.

At age 28, Delano decided to trade in his teaching role for a landscaping job at Ruppert Landscape in D.C. After only four months as a field laborer, Delano was promoted to assistant supervisor, then supervisor, and then management within two years.

Delano was at Ruppert for 12 years before the company was acquired by TruGreen. He stayed at TruGreen for a couple of years before he left. Eventually, he decided to start Level Green with Hardy – who initially hired Delano at Ruppert years earlier and left TruGreen around the same time.

For the first few years, to honor Hardy’s non-compete agreement, Level Green did residential landscape installations around Capitol Hill. They started doing a few commercial installations before switching entirely to that market.

“We found that residential installations ate up a lot of resources that we could use elsewhere – and we really needed those resources to support commercial customers,” Delano says. “So we decided to get out of (residential work) in 2010.”

Although Level Green still does some commercial installations for existing customers (accounting for 10 to 15 percent of overall sales), the company is almost entirely focused on commercial landscape management.

Level Green maintains commercial properties like shopping centers, office buildings, condos, HOAs and government buildings through core services like mulching, weeding, fertilization and leaf removal. Upsells include enhancements, redesigns and snow removal; snow services can account for as much as 20 percent of Level Green’s revenue per year.

Fast track to growth.

For most of Level Green’s history, the only advertising was through logos on trucks parked at properties around D.C. As demand for commercial maintenance services grew, Delano had to hire quickly to keep up.

“My biggest problem is getting the right people to work for us and keeping them,” he says. “It was a problem when I started in this industry 30 years ago, and I think it will always be a problem.”

To combat the problem, Level Green has been rolling out new recruiting and training programs. The company amped up its internship program by attending more college career days to recruit interns. The company also introduced a management training program that fast-tracks recent grads into management positions. Level Green has account managers, who oversee client interactions and customer service, and operations managers, who lead and train crews.

After trainees select one of those two management tracks, they’re exposed to the responsibilities for six to 12 months, while they shadow other managers, visit job sites and observe crews to learn the job. The company has been adding one new account manager and one new operations manager each year, so Delano hopes the program will keep the talent pipeline full.

Slow churn.

By focusing on hiring the right people and training them to excel, Level Green has been reducing turnover as it grows.

“One of the primary things we hear from customers who are looking to make changes (to their landscape contractor) is that they don’t know who to call,” Delano says. “They’ve had three different customer service reps in the last year and it’s frustrating for them because they have to explain their preferences over and over again.”

Level Green began tracking its turnover-related costs in 2015. In one year, they reduced crew turnover rates by 5 percent, cutting associated company-wide replacement costs from more than $600,000 to just over $400,000 annually.

Keeping employees means keeping customers, too, as the company’s renewal rate stays above 90 percent. Those numbers are more important to Delano than the dollars. Although, as a result, revenues have been growing, too – around 30 percent annually, to about $15.7 million in 2016.

“It’s a people industry,” he says. “If you want to make more money, you have fewer people doing the work and less customer contact. We’re willing to accept a little less profitability to be competitive in customer service. With our focus on that, we’ll continue to grow in the D.C. market.”